Pharmaceuticals need sales and marketing members to help in their business. However, the business is constantly changing and evolving. Online marketing and other sales strategies are becoming more popular online and a lot of pharmaceutical industries are considering using a sales force automation tool for their business. If you already have this software, this article talks about the 7 things you need to look out in your sales force automation.
Why Do You Need Sales Force Automation for Your Pharmaceutical Company?
Pharmaceutical companies need to constantly develop and enhance their resources in sales force as innovations takes place. They also need to focus on their return of investment, their sales profits and sales growth. Using sales force automation software reminds them to follow up orders, delegates tasks in a timely manner, streamline the tasks at hand and provide a detailed sales report.
Pharmaceuticals utilize sales force automation software companies because they want to concentrate on their sales and marketing campaigns. This is because there is a higher chance that customers will buy their products. Using automated processes can also help nurture leads and make the customers feel significant. They will be able to develop a personal customer relationship and have open communication with them. The more customers purchase a product and are happy with the results, the more likely it is that they will purchase again. Not only that, they will indirectly or directly let everyone they know about the company and their positive experience, which creates brand awareness.
If you want to know more information about the sales force automation used by pharmaceuticals, read on CrowdReviews.com’s best sales force automation tools. You will be able to get updates on the latest information made by healthcare professionals like you.
How Can You Automate Your Sales Force?
There are five simple ways to automate your sales force. These are:
- Set up your sales process. You need to research about your target market and other sales areas before you set up your sales campaigns. This includes a timeframe, your customers purchasing behavior, the phases of your sales process, your sales and marketing team, what forms of communication is needed and your sales strategies.
- Determine what you need to automate. Each pharmaceutical company has its own areas on what to automate. Set up a meeting with your team to find out which tasks are time-consuming or too difficult if it was done manually. Discover what tasks can be automated without sacrificing the quality of customer service.
- Find out the resources you need. Of course, you need an automation software for your sales force. Just make sure that it helps you lessen your manual data entry work, integrate with your other current software and is not complex to use. You can read CrowdReviews.com’s best sales force automation tools to find out which software offers you the tasks you need to automate.
- Set up your automation. Each software has its own way of personalizing or customizing its fields. You need to set up specific details at the start, but once done, you’re good to go. Don’t forget to set up your method of communication as well.
- Monitor the software and modify it if needed. The software still needs the guidance of humans to be able to effectively be useful. You may need to change details once in awhile to produce the results you’re looking for. Monitor the software once in awhile by checking, measuring and analyzing your data.
Now, that you know about how to automate your software, let’s talk about the barriers that you may encounter in the pharmaceutical world and how sales force automation can help.
The pharmaceutical world is constantly changing. More accessibility and features are easily available in this online world. It’s faster to find accurate and up-to-date healthcare data and communication is better than ever thanks to social media. However, you can still encounter barriers along the way that can hinder your growth in your pharmaceutical company. These are just some of the obstacles that you may encounter and the solutions that you can use if you have sales force automation.
Barrier 1: Pre-call Planning
Medical representatives may have difficulties in preparing for presentations regarding sales visits before their sales campaigns. They need to research, review and evaluate previous meetings and other data to collaborate with doctors. They need to give the doctor interesting and relevant data during the presentation.
Depending on the data the medical representative provides to the doctor, this will affect the relationship with the medical representative and the doctor in the future. Therefore pre-call planning is vital before a sales call. That’s why it’s important to set your business objectives and goals for your sales campaigns and use sales force automation to manage and generate the data from customers’ history to find out which sales strategies are effective. You’ll also benefit from having all data stored centrally with chronological call logs and histories recorded.
Barrier 2: Post-call Planning
Medical representatives keep track of customer information during their sales calls. Once they meet the doctor personally, most of the time the representatives rely on stock information or using their written notes. This is a great strategy but what if they forget about certain things or if the notebook was lost or is unusable? A great strategy that representatives do is that they input the information they have on the software; create tasks or appointments so that they would not forget about it.
Additionally, post-call planning provides details on determining what were the weak and strong points of the call, which can be used for future sales calls. You’ll be able to get or add data faster and easier. The software will make sure you’ll never miss a task, schedule or appointment regarding your sales.
Barrier 3: Regular Sales Call Monitoring Reports
Medical representatives create sales reports every day, often in the Excel. Sometimes these reports can be delayed or details can be overlooked. They can also be forgotten. This will affect the sales force data because it is incomplete. Using sales force automation will provide data that is up-to-date and complete all the time. If you want to know more about which software is right for your company, read CrowdReviews.com’s reviews of sales force automation tools.
Barrier 4: Offers New and Essential Data to Doctors
Another issue medical representatives might face is how they can present new and essential information to doctors. Not only that, they also want to get the feedback of the doctor regarding the product. Using sales force automation software for pharmacy companies can help them provide the information in a timely manner in a platform (email, chat, website or others) that they both use and communicate.
Barrier 5: Responding to Doctor Inquiries
Medical representatives need to answer the questions of the doctors as soon as possible. If there is a delay with the information, it will affect their sales productivity. Using the software will get doctors the answers they need fast.
Barrier 6: Last minute Appointment Delays or Cancellations
Unexpected things happen and sometimes doctors postpone or cancel their appointments. Using a sales force automation system can help medical representatives find a suitable new schedule for the next appointment instead.
Barrier 7: Medical Representatives and Doctor Unavailability
Both medical representatives and doctors have busy lives. When one has an inquiry, it may not be addressed immediately because of their hectic schedules. Using sales force automation for pharmaceuticals is a great way to still keep in touch and be updated with what’s happening with one another.
Barrier 8: Dealing with Dead time
This barrier can be tricky because you have to make dead time into productive time. The software provides activities that you can do while waiting, increasing your productivity. Using a sales force automation tool offers you tasks that you can do while waiting.
If you’re not part of a pharmaceutical company but are interested to use sales force automation, you can still use the software and reap the benefits it provides. The benefits of sales force automation include:
- Easy to generate fast and accurate reports
- Organizes and manages customer and doctor accounts
- Improves sales team management
- Gives an overview with current schedule and is able to set up appointments easily
- Discover leads and sales opportunities
- Predicts sales campaign outcomes or has sales forecasting
- Producing and managing quotes and orders
- Monitors competitors
- Provides cross selling and up selling
- Cloud and mobile capabilities
A productive sales force boosts sales and improves the customer experience, which accelerates the sales growth of businesses. This could be a problem especially when there is an increased competition and customer needs shift constantly. That’s why it’s best to automate your sales forces, helping you keep up with what’s happening with your sales team. What company wouldn’t want to improve their sales force and increase their return of investments? If you want to get started with sales force automation, check out CrowdReviews.com’s reviews of sales force automation tools now.
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